Story of teh Day 9/ 22/ 2009

A friend emailed me, yesterday, asking what I thought of Facebook.

Her son , who is far away at college, is urging her to sign up.

I admitted that my college daughter signed me up, the first time she was home on break.

Esther did not do this because she had some tremendous desire to share her life with all of its details with me, or to have me constantly send her growing gifts. She did it because I kept annoying her to send me photos.

By getting a Facebook account set up for me, I could see the photos she posted to her Facebook page, and leave her alone. Smart girl. You can see how she got into a good college!

So, I explained to my friend, Linda, that this was a big benefit of having a Facebook account. Also, it didn’t’ limit you to seeing the pictures your child posts- you also get to see any photos their friends post of them in which they are tagged, videos, what they are complaining about, what parties they have been to, who their friends are, what clubs they belong to have planned as activities, if they are in a relationship….sheesh, all of the sudden I have become a Peeping Tom into my child’s life!

I did warn her, though, that it is a tremendous time –water. If I would just stop playing Farm Town and clean my house…….but, to be honest, if it weren’t Farm Town, I would find some other activity to keep me from having to mop. Solitaire?

The other thing that I learned about Facebook, is that it is a great way to find lost people.
Well, they don’t know they are lost. As far as they are concerned, they know where they are; I just don’t know where they are.

I have people in my life who are dear friends who have vanished. I know that Isabella was in Philadelphia in 1981, but after that? And even though her name is distinctive, it has not been distinctive enough for me to locate her in searches of phone directory listings for the 48 contiguous states. But there she was on Facebook! Only 28 years later!

And people can find me. Even people I never knew existed.

Like relatives.

Of course, the fact that they would locate me and make contact with me and ask to be friends with me on Facebook is a good indicator that they have never met me. And I have even tried to warn some of them.
I have been very generous in describing myself as being a little demented. Okay, maybe I should have left off the little…..
But find me they have.

One is a cousin – 4th or 5th, and we are related through my maternal grandmother…and grandfather- since they were cousins.
And this one is a 2nd cousin once removed. Which doesn’t’ mean that anyone was disowned, just that we are separated by generations, one of us being an F3 and one of us being an F4. Sorry, but since I am the family genealogist, I get to label all this stuff- sometimes inaccurately.

Don’t have a stroke. I am only the family genealogist by default.
10 years ago, when the relatives who are much cheerier than I am – you know , the kind who join fraternities and sororites and do things like smile and say” hello” because they actually noticed you, not because someone has said “hello” loudly enough to get their usually distracted attention or because they have accidentally bumped someone with their shopping cart or their fat butt, and “hello “is the precursor to” gosh, I am very sorry!”
Those kinds of cousins.

And believe it or not, I have several of them. And, obviously, we are F3s and F4s, so the genes they have that produced this friendly demeanor are not the same genes I stood a chance of getting…..

Anyhow, those friendly, outgoing cousins who started planning this family reunion in Chicago needed volunteers. And what chore do you give the cousin who is a bookworm, somewhat obsessive, and can decipher small amounts of Hebrew from gravestones and documents? Family tree research.

I had about 15 months before the reunion, and I did what even I consider to be a good job, although, my husband really would have preferred to have had occasional use of the dining room table and a wife who made it to bed before 2 A.M., most mornings.
As a result, I have a very neurotically multi-paged diagram of the family going back to the 11th century.

And I am, grateful to God, that I didn’t’ get stuck with the “current” part of the family tree.
One thing that I learned from cousin Wendy, who did get that job, is while being off by two years on someone’s birth or death date ( I have two ancestors for whom I have a “choice” of years, probably due to the inability to tell a 5 from an 8 in someone’s very small handwritten notes), being off by even a month with a living relative means your head gets chopped off. And don’t misspell their middle name or switch the birth order for any of their grandchildren.
Interestingly enough, dead people don’t complain about any of those things.

So, I get contacted once in a while, by someone is isn’t quite sure if they are a relative, or they are fairly sure, or even certain that we are related , but just not sure HOW .

And this is really nice. You would be amazed t the really nice cousins I now have! Okay, you really would be amazed, since you know me, but , remember, we are F3s and F4s and sometimes F6s and F7s, so there really are not that many shared genes….although, I have detected a general genetic tendency amongst all of us to be chocolate addicts…..

But, even via the great anonymous public entity that is Facebook, there are awkwar
d moments when “meeting “ these relatives.

I had one of those moments, this week.

I received a message from a cousin whose name didn’t immediately ring any bells. Luckily, she explained who she was and what her maiden name was, and that she had even heard about me from another cousin.

Of course, at this point, I am wondering why she is contacting me, if she has already heard about me. But, it turns out, that she has heard about me from her aunt, who is a cousin of my father’s , who is so sweet that it would never even occur to her not to say something nice about me.
Talk about false advertising…….

And, in her message, she says, “We have never met…” Which is true.
However, it left me with a little bit of a sticky situation, because she has met one of my immediate family members .
A sibling.

And, against what most people would consider to be better judgment- except that I don’t’ have any- or, what it really is…well, is my tendency to just plunge right in and say whatever I think, I let her know this….

You see, about 38 or 39 years ago, or maybe 40 years……her mother got a phone call in the middle of the night from the police. They had just arrested some teens who were in a stolen car. One of the boys’ last names was Margolis. The officer at the small police station knew my cousin’s mother and somehow remembered that Margolis was her maiden name….did she think this might be a relative.?

My cousin’s mother, Rochelle, told the policeman to ask the boy who his grandparents were.
When he came back to her with the names, Rochelle drove down and bailed my brother out of jail. We won’t go into whether or not the boys were also drunk or stoned or any of the other lovely details, but, as far as I know, that was her and her family’s only real interaction with mine.

What can I say? My side of the family really knows how to make a lasting first impression.

I hope my brother thanked her.

Addendum- My friend- I had asked her permission to reference her in the story, sent me the following clarification :

except Barry Sr ( her husband ) wants me on it. Barry Jr (her son) is mortified & doesn't want me near it :-)